Ritu Menon is an Indian feminist, writer and publisher.

Career

In 1984, Menon co-founded

Kali for Women Kali for Women was a start-up feminist publisher in India. Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon set up Kali for Women in 1984, arguably the first Indian publishing house dedicated to publishing on and for women. When they decided to take this step, ...

, India's first exclusively feminist publishing house, along with

Urvashi Butalia Urvashi Butalia (born 1952) is an Indian feminist writer, publisher and activist. She is known for her work in the women's movement of India, as well as for authoring books such as ''The Other Side of Silence: Voices from and the Partition of I ...

, her longtime collaborator. In 2003, ''Kali for Women'' shut shop due to lack of commercial viability compounded by irreconcilable personal differences between Menon and Butalia. Thereafter, Menon independently founded ''Women Unlimited,'' another feminist publishing house. She has also written numerous newspaper articles and op-eds. Her writing focuses on

violence against women Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), are violent acts primarily or exclusively committed against women or girls, usually by men or boys. Such violence is often con ...

, religion's take on women and the gender divide across the society from a strongly feminist and left-wing perspective. Over a

Zoom Zoom may refer to: Technology Computing * Zoom (software), videoconferencing application * Page zooming, the ability to magnify or shrink a portion of a page on a computer display * Zooming user interface, a graphical interface allowing for image ...

call, she talked about ''Address Book: A Publishing Memoir in the time of COVID'', which she wrote during the pandemic without an explicit plan to publish a book. “It became a form of putting down what I was going through, remembering, thinking, reading, and worrying about,” she says (13 July 2021).

Publications

* The Unfinished Business, Outlook, May 2001 *Anti-CAA protests by Muslim women are about where, how and why you belong, Indian Express, Feb 2020 *Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition *Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India *From Mathura to Manorama: Resisting Violence Against Women in India *address book: a publishing memoir in the time of covid

Honour

In 2000-2001 she served on the International Advisory Board of the

Raja Rao Award for Literature The Raja Rao Award, in some sources the Raja Rao Award for Literature,L. Macedo, "Dabydeen, David", ''The Encyclopedia of Twentieth‐Century Fiction'', Brian Shaffer, editor, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, p. 1035.Eric Martone, ''Encyclopedia of Blacks i ...

."Professional Notes"
''World Englishes''
Vol. 20, No. 1
(

Wiley-Blackwell Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...

2001), pp. 117–118. In 2011, Menon and Butalia were jointly conferred the

Padma Shri Padma Shri ( IAST: ''padma śrī''), also spelled Padma Shree, is the fourth-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conf ...

, India's fourth-highest civilian award, by the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

References

External links

About Ritu Menon, Women Unlimited

Indian feminist writers Living people Recipients of the Padma Shri in literature & education Indian women publishers Indian publishers (people) English-language writers from India 20th-century Indian journalists Women writers from Delhi Indian women journalists 20th-century Indian women writers 20th-century Indian businesswomen 20th-century publishers (people) Businesswomen from Delhi 21st-century Indian businesswomen Year of birth missing (living people) {{India-journalist-stub